Replacing a text file with a directory name using sed command

Question

I have the directories structure as below:

Folder1/
  |____file.txt
Folder2/
  |____file.txt 
Folder3/
  |____file.txt
  :
Foldern/
  |____file.txt

Each .txt file in the directories has a word that I want to replace with the directory name.

file.txt:

"name": "Engineering",

I am looking to replace the word Engineering with the directory name, e.g. for Folder1:

"name": "Folder1"

My intial attempt is as below:

for f in Folder*; do (cd $f; echo $f; sed -i -e "s/Engineering/Folder*/" file.txt); done

However, the sed command doesn't seem to see Folder* as Folder numbers.

Those files don't happen to be JSON files? If so, using jq rather than sed may be preferable (if one know anything about the structure of those JSON files). — Kusalananda
– Kusalananda ♦, Commented Apr 13, 2020 at 20:49

Freddy · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-13 20:31:48Z

2

There's no need to cd into the directory. You can loop over the file paths and extract the folder name:

for file in Folder*/file.txt; do
  sed -i -e "s/Engineering/${file%%/*}/" "$file"
done

The parameter expansion ${file%%/*} removes the longest suffix /* and leaves the folder name.

answered Apr 13, 2020 at 20:31

Freddy

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